KU School of Medicine-Wichita

14 Kathleen Grandison A Member of the First Class Kathleen Grandison grew up near Clements, a Chase County town that's not a town anymore. After earning her bachelor's at Kansas State University, she went to KU School of Medicine in Kansas City, the "aordable" choice. When KU sought volunteers among the Class of '75 to finish their training at the new outpost in Wichita, Grandison was among 15 selected. "I just thought that might be the place to go because the clinical experience in Wichita might not be so crowded. We would have more of a chance to get hands-on experience. And that's indeed what happened." "I loved my surgery module. I remember being allowed to watch open-heart surgery and assisting in simpler cases. I remember being there for births, and it was a very memorable, positive experience," she said. Wanting to work with patients of all ages, "it was a pretty easy jump for me into family medicine," said Grandison, who did residency in Fort Worth. From Grandison's Wichita class, four trained in family medicine. She's spent virtually all of her four-decade career in the Northeast, first as a solo practitioner in rural New York for eight years and since then in Massachusetts. Along the way, she raised three daughters and a son. She's put the broad spectrum of training she gained in Wichita to use. She recounts finding, using a technique from her internal medicine rotation, an occlusion — a 99% blockage of the carotid artery — in an otherwise healthy woman, likely saving her life. She used her obstetrics training over 200 times during her New York years, at the local hospital and a birthing center she ran. Skyrocketing insurance rates drove her from "birthing babies, which I so enjoyed … those were very special moments for me to be present with those families." Grandison and partners ran a practice in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, for many years, and she now works two days a week for a group in nearby Northampton. Soon, 25 students a year from the University of Massachusetts medical school are expected to do rotations in her part of the state, the more rural western half. "There's something exciting about that, to know that we will be helping find the future doctors for this area, because they really aren't out there right now." Through family and friends, she keeps in touch with her Kansas roots. And appreciates the experience she had in 1974 and 1975. "We really listened to each other. You could tell that the faculty took great interest in our well-being. And that we would learn what we needed to learn to be a good physician, as they were good physicians who were teaching," Grandison said. Five Decades Along Across 50 years of growth and evolution, thousands of students, residents, faculty and sta followed Grandison, Dyck and Stephens. Together, they helped fulfill KUSM-Wichita's mission of training doctors for Kansas and beyond. Though there were naysayers in the beginning, our people have proven, without a doubt, that the men and women attending KU School of Medicine-Wichita received and continue to receive a quality, innovative and collaborative education meeting the current medical needs of their communities. The Standardized Patient Program begins in the Family & Community Medicine third-year clerkship with an HRSA grant submitted by Doug Woolley, M.D., and Rick Kellerman, M.D. Later, students in all disciplines participated in the program. 1997 Family Medicine Residency program is accredited at what is now Ascension Via Christi, merging the programs at St. Joseph and St. Francis. 1997

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